"Many people in the industry assumed that Itanium had a low - and poor - profile among end users. That was what the folks at IDC assumed until recently, when they surveyed 500 members of their Enterprise Server Customer Panel. The results were somewhat surprising, they said. Not only was there a high level of awareness among the users - more than 80 percent knew of the platform - but that their intent to buy an Itanium system was fairly strong. About 24 percent of those polled said they had bought at least one Itanium system, though only 13 percent of non-HP users had done so. However, more than a third of all participants said they were highly likely to buy an Itanium system within the next 12 to 18 months."